Gerrit picked up Montreal’s Alex Zhang Hungtai (aka Dirty Beaches) single True Blue on a whim…based solely on the vintage picture awesomeness of the album cover….when pre-ordering another record. He just tossed it on the turntable and I’m in instant obsessive love in a way that only I know how to be.

It’s like listening to some ghost from my never-lived past, singing eerie gritty doo-wop into my ear. Yup, I’m digging the dirtier-than-it-ever-was throwback groove. Dirty Beaches indeed.

And the photo from the album cover that brought Alex into my life:

This guy installed an ant colony in his scanner. Then scanned them each week for five years. And the result? Art! Who knew.

Behold the awesome…

[You might want to clicky-click those little white arrows next to the word vimeo and take her full screen.]

ANTS in my scanner > a five years time-lapse! from françois vautier on Vimeo.

[music : Franks - Infected Mushroom. ]

I once saw a documentary on the artist-disguised-as-a-bird known as the bowerbird. I was floored by their amazing interior design work. Their nests..or bowers…are full of  beautiful colors and complex shapes. Honestly, they are works of art.

Today as I was paging through the July issue of National Geographic and ran across a story on bowerbirds.  While looking at the photos of some of the incredibly beautiful and intricate nests I was reminded of the equally as beautiful and intricate work of environmental sculptor Andrew Goldsworthy. The similarity between some of the bird’s structures and Goldsworthy’s pieces is really uncanny.

Below is a mix of bowerbird and Goldsworthy pieces….

…this adorable etching by Michel Fingesten. It comes to us circa 1923 and I have much love for it. Perhaps I’m feeling the love because I just finished reading a good book with a lot of monks in it. But I really think I’d be enthralled with it anyway.

I mean look at that trying-so-hard monk doing his darnedest to pray away temptation…the horny little unhelpful goat…and the adorable perky behind of the naughty temptress trying to lead our hero astray. So perfect.

It reminds me of a pen and ink I have on the wall in my dining room. I found it one day in the back room of a thrift store many years ago. It’s of a guy in a yarmulke…possibly a Rabbi…looking at a nude painting on a wall in a museum I suppose. There’s something so sweet and amusing and human about it. I wonder if the artist of my pen and ink was inspired by this piece.

[Via ClassicalGraphics]

I was watching a TED talk and got served up this lovely bit of animation after having watched one of the talks. It’s a little funny, a little sweet, a little sad, and a little thought provoking.

I thought it was worth sharing so I tracked it down on Vimeo.

It’s called “Good Vibrations” and the writer/director is Jeremy Clapin. It was produced for the Responsibility Project for Liberty Mutual.

Good Vibrations from Helene Emain on Vimeo.

These decidedly trippy hippy kids book illustrations from the 60′s and 70′s.

And guess where they all came from. Why from the TRIPPY HIPPY kid’s books from the 60′s and 70′s Flickr pool of course.

Lots more eye candy to see there so please do go visit.

These pieces by UK freelance designer Paul Tebbot.

I’m a big fan of the colors, overall tone and simplicity. Be sure to go take a look at the rest of the  good eye-candy in Tebbot’s Horizon Fire Flickr stream. I had a devil of a time just choosing which pieces to show you.

And be sure to take a fly by his website also.

Blu has done it again. Mesmerizing awesomeness. I am in stupefied and blissful awe.

Yeah, it’s good. Try it….you’ll like it. I promise.

[Oh and be sure to click on that little arrow symbol thingie in the right hand corner next to the word vimeo to take it full screen.]

BIG BAG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This is a shortened clip of Omer Fast’s 18-minute-long CNN Concatenated (2002). All footage was grabbed from CNN and spliced together into an inch of it’s death into an angst-ridden fascinating work of pure genius.

Every single word spoken by a different mouth…sometimes even the breaths or tongue clicks taken by different people. Mesmerizing.

Be sure to check out the longer version (no embedding…grr…don’t get me started) which is 10 of the original 18. It really ramps up the angst and lays it on you. Definitely worth watching.

(via Coilhouse)

…these incredible Polaroid pictures. Part of a collection of 100 random Polaroids by different photographers and artists.

Be sure to go take a look at the rest.

But wait…there’s more…clicky-click…